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Golden Lanka
Part the First of Two.


"Golden Lanka will also one day Burn."

Lord Ram turned to the enigmatic figure who now ruled, both legally and in reality, the Empire of his people. "Lady Nirrti, praytell what you mean?"

"Another part of the prophecy I received some hundreds of years ago," the long-faced Devaastra answered to her last surviving counterpart. Her hair was dark crimson red, the exact colour of blood, spooling and falling down until it reached the mark of her knees, blue-on-blue eyes, betraying not a hint of iris or cornea, regarding him in casual ease, ignoring the intensity in which she always lived. "It seems quite terrifyingly real, now."

"I don't know why you have declined to bring Lassha aboard our ships," Ram answered as he impatiently stalked the upper grille on the bridge of the Lord Krishna, looking down at the massive hologlobe below that encompassed the displays from the Sol symbol. "You are going to be worrying about her throughout the whole battle."

"The Pamirs are quite safe. Ravana is attacking us, remember. He will not try to completely destroy the Earth, but seize it for himself; even in the madness our true enemies have brought to us, he is too cunning for that. No, my fear is that he'll win, and in the process destroy all of us. That is why I do not presume to elevate Lassha; she would be his target if she were a newling, barely a Devaastra and just raised to the powers we hold, unfamiliar in their use. I cannot take the risk."

"I keep my harem aboard the Curoija," a voice of a different accent spoke, glaring contemptuously at the two Mariliths on either side, each brandishing a nula-weapon and close-range disintegrators. In combination, they might have a microscopic chance of killing her, at cost of their own lives. "I expect that even if your precious Lord Ravana is willing to gamble for power, that Gorkha and Kshatriya, treacherous comrades from my own arms, will not be so merciful. You may well regret keeping Lassha on the surface..."

"So far, Maedhv Curoi'larijh," Nirrti answered mildly, as she turned, shifting her robes, and gazed sharply at her recent enemy, "I have not seen Ravana to have any lack of control over his compatriots in this madness." A frown. "And don't look at Lord Ram's presence as a mark against you, for all that you broadcast so brazenly your mistrust. I did not invite the Lady Danuya so that I could cut you off without support and kill you; you know I am above that. Ram and I are quite committed to the alliance."

The far more firey haired High Caste Asvin glared for a moment, and then sighed in the midst of her green cloak. "Very well. Both of us, the last of the loyal Golden Condors, stand with you--as you well know. Our government has given you full support, that I can't really imagine how you as an alien seized control..."

"She was of the highest surviving rank!" Ram snapped, beautiful and manfully handsome countenance turned furiously to Maedhv. "Do not doubt it. I would never support a coup by an outsider, but she has fought alongside us, and against your poisoned people, for a dozen generations. She acceded naturally to the highest rank and you will never doubt this."

"Of course," Maedhv smirked. "Dare I presume to question your honour..."

"You would sorely regret it. We are more experienced than both you and Danuya," Nirrti added, a bit darkly but also quite true. She was the oldest, the first, and she would not hold back against those she mostly despised, though in the case of Maedhv some genuine hope lingered. "At any rate, interesting that you would put your harem on a level comparable to my lover. Perhaps you wish to explain this?"

"I care about them," Maedhv replied, and then froze in surprise at her own admission.

Nirrti snorted. "Then let them go, and perhaps I'll believe you."

"We're not here to discuss the sacred practices of the High Caste," Maedhv answered stiffly, and turned her attention to the holo-globe below. "The Lady Saranga is in position, I see. You will return to your ship soon, Lord Ram?"

"So I will," he answered from his distant position on the catwalk around the upper globe. "And are your No-ship squadrons in position for this battle?"

"But of course. You know I'll heed the Lady Nirrti's orders, but no others."

"I'm aware. We are all operating under her overall tactical direction, Curoi'larijh."

Maedhv snorted. "Let's hope that's a good thing." She spun on heel and stepped directly in front of Nirrti, the Mariliths slithering out of the way somewhat nervously; a confrontation between a Devaastra and a Golden Condor would easily kill mortals of even the finest constitution who were in near proximity, with no murderous intent from either participant. "So, oh Iron Age Queen, praytell what your battle plan is?"

"We are going to wait under No-fields," Nirrti replied. "In the lagrange point to the dark side of Fair Luna, and there we will appear on their flank as they move toward the Sacred Orb, and the primary beams of the Lord Krishna and Lady Saranga will open up the engagement when we shift to standby mode. No knowledge of the plan will enlighten the mind of the thrice-traitor so blessed by devils. And our true enemies who ride with him are no more cunning than he."

"But we will be equally blind within the No-fields! No knowledge can penetrate them!" Maedhv shouted outright, and then fell silent immediately, her mind correcting in a heartbeat as she recalled the deeds attributed to Nirrti; it would be worthwhile to at least listen.

"Not quite true. No radiation or energy can penetrate them, physical matter can do so quite easily," Nirrti replied, crossing her legs within her black robes and laughing faintly. "My dear Golden Condor, I will have a simple dumb machine tethered outside the hull, and when its sensors see the corona of the arriving fleet of Ravana, they will fire a pellet into the hull of Lord Krishna. The tap of a crystal, to our senses, and the mechanical detectors of the corona can fire such a pellet without a computer-mind to direct them, that would reveal us to Ravana; pure mechanics. So it shall be for each ship; we will be able to switch to standby within the beat of a heart and gain the drop on their power and their fleets. I have fought in this war for centuries longer than you have, Maedhv Curoi'larijh, and I remember tricks all others have forgotten."

Maedhv pressed, for the sake of riling the hated enemy of her nation: "But as an alien... And a barbarian, no less, how do you expect me to trust your competence? You may have been raised to a Devaastra, but I know your origins..."

"Consider my record in the war, and anyway, you are concerned with purity of blood. How do you think mine less pure than your's, for my own race? Enlighten yourself when you stand on the verge death." Nirrti, cold, unflappable, never once showed the slightest response to the prods

"Do you think we can win even if we do what you say?" Maedhv answered, very untrusting, but then, the war had lasted eight hundred and fifty revolutions of Sol to date and there was no trust possible. Anyway, now she was curious about the opinion of the famed alien who had become the battlemaster of the Sarasavsati.

"We have one chance in three," Nirrti answered. "I have fought battles at longer odds before, and won, and better odds, and lost. The battle simulation computers aid where no knowledge of Ravana's actions nor those of the others riven in this madness is possible."

Maedhv turned away and regarded the holo-globe, silently.

It was Nirrti's turn to press dangerously. "Are you planning to flee from us? You know I won't let you."

"I am not a coward, though if you are so intent to find a reason to strike me down, by all means..."

The offer, obviously, dropped the subject; it was proof enough of Maedhv's intents. "I need you, Maedhv. We are already so badly outnumbered in Devaastras. Four against sixty-two, and our fleet outnumbered ten to one in all but the heaviest of ships. Anyway, I have followed your career and social circumstances with interest across the spynets. You are redeemable, and now that I am in charge of the Sarasavsati, the peace will be permanent, anyway. The war against the Eldest may, after all, take centuries."

"Complimented by the Conquering Lady of the South?" Maedhv shook her head as she used one of Nirrti's more poetic epithets. "I will stay, of course. This is my home, now, though you destroyed my old one, it matters not. I'll fight to the death for the Earth of my Race. Well, you are the best chance for its continued existence, so of course I will adhere to the terms. I'll deploy a warning 'bot of the sort you proposed, it will be easy enough for the nanoconstructors on my ships to produce them."

"Thank you, Maedhv," Nirrti replied with minimal further elaboration. "We had best go to our positions at once. Ravana will of course expend his first shots on the orbitals in lieu of engaging us, but it is beyond even our power to save them, and they have been evacuated already, anyway."

"So it will be," Maedhv agreed, at least on that much, and turned to leave. At the verge of the deck, she paused, and turned, to look at the figure of Nirrti, sitting, as frozen as a statue in iron. "Praytell, Lady Death," she used another epithet, "Why do you stay, when you could take Lassha and flee beyond the wearying effects of the mind-power of the Eldest?"

"Because for almost a millennium have I fought this war; why would I abandon it at the finish, when the finish is the point at which it's finally become moral to fight? Surely the Wheel of Dharma demands that I hold my ground."

"Even if it demands your death?"

"I have already outlived my children; if I die protecting the life of my Lassha, I would think it very fitting."

What secrets do the cloak of years hide within you? Maedhv mused silently. What have you truly seen and lost in this war, and before it? What was your life before the old Sarasavsati plucked you up, and quite by mistake made you the first of our kind? I wonder if I will ever know.... "Thank you, Lady Nirrti." She turned and left, and at a chopped motion from Nirrti, the Mariliths did not slither after her.

"Do you think she will resume the war?" Ram had remained silent across the command chamber of the ship, but now he again spoke.

"No. She's as sick of it as we all are. WIth the old political leadership dead and the beings who drove them to insanity revealed in full now, if we can survive the onslaught of the Golden Condors and Devaastra who they turned against their own kind, who enslaved the Jeweled Fleets and the Condor Squadrons, we will have peace. Well, peace, but as Maedhv and I both know it will really be, a war of common cause against the Eldest, a war to be waged from hidden places until we build our strength, and then again in full. They have opened themselves to the highest sort of malfeasance in making us massacre civilians by the quadrillion; we will repay the debt in kind, I do so pray, and perhaps thus let the dead rest more easily. But by the time that war is over, there will be no desire to resume the old quarrels."

"And then, I suppose, we will see what the future brings..." He trailed off, before at least asking the question which must now finally be asked: "What of Sita?

"We will try to save her and bring her back," Nirrti allowed with a hint of real emotion creeping into her voice, distorting the image provided by her utterly expressionless, masquelike face. "But you know I can make no promises. Still, if I am all who remains when this battle is over--I promise you that the histories I leave behind will have you the hero, and Sita rescued. The Ramayana, I suppose it would be."

"When you match the power of the three of us put together!?" Ram laughed and shook his head. "You truly desire to pass through this life without fame, do you not?"

"Love, and only love," Nirrti asserted, and for the first time allowed herself a hair of a true smile. "We are fighting over Luna for the survival of the shattered remnants of two great Empires. But to me, there is only Lassha, and I shall rest in her arms until the universe itself ends, if the Fates will it so and Dharma grants me such a boon. My only true concern Is that I am unworthy of her... Or, worse, unworthy of redeeming her."

"Our people have committed great evil, have they not?" He finally dared put the question to the one individual most likely to answer it honestly.

"Immeasurable evil, Lord Ram. The darkest Lord of Hell could not match the Sarasavsati, and the Asvin are worse, and I am tainted until I am the equal of that Lord of Hell by mere association."

"Then if the Fates decree any of us to survive as they spin the wheel, surely it will be you, Lady Nirrti..."

"I am not, truly, ever afraid even for my own life. I know I will survive this battle as I have survived many before. No, it is the sins of your people that strike fear in my heart."

"Lassha."

"Indeed," Nirrti choked on the next words. "She is as evil and as guilty as the rest of you. That is what I go into battle fearing."

"The planetary shields will hold," Ram answered in a grim effort of reassurance. "And the Lady Saranga will be here to ever support you, with my own efforts in your hand."

"But Sita does fight against us. If she stands ready to stroke the firing stud on the Lord Varuna and blank out Luna or the Earth, if Maedhv's fears were to be born out--let us appeal to the Fates it not be so, for the sake of the babes if nothing else!--and thus exterminate in a heartbeat hundreds of billions on the surface and Lassha besides, will you reach out with all the madness of your arts of war and death and strike her low?"

Ram swallowed, and hung his head at the misery of the situation, of the final culmination of eight hundred and fifty years of internicine warfare, driven on by an external enemy that they could have annihilated handily working together, but, remaining in the shadows, had brought them to the point of doom and then driven most of their surviving number insane, mad with nihilistic savagery, and sallied them force to sweep over all that remained. And in that number, so also was his mate.

"Yes, though I'd fling myself into a black hole the moment the battle was ended."

"But that is when the battle is over. The noblest deaths are always then. Remember, Lord Ram. This is your story."

"Lady of the Silent Wastes," he whispered. "Withhold the Sovereign Blade of Fate; surcease the Kiss of Dharma from Sita's brow." He straightened. "I had best return to the Lady Saranga. If it comes to pass.. I trust you, oldest of our kind, and loyal soldier of my people from the first to the last. So as you have known seven hundred years of our war, so you will, at least, preside over its end." And then, he, too, left for his ship.

Once Nirrti was alone on the bridge with her Mariliths, she keyed open the private channel to the surface she had lately hardwired into the armchair controls and replaced the whole of the hologlobe with the grand imagine of her tall and dusky-elegant Lassha, reaching down to the surface in her mind to feel the reassuring throb of her telepathic abilities, so blossomingly intense for a member of even the High Caste, and what had brought her to the attention and service of the security forces... A fact for which Nirrti now feared for her fate in life and in the battle to come.

"My precious love, this is the last message until the battle. We're going to activate the No-fields."

"It's good that you called," Lassha was trembling enough that it was visible on the massive hologram. "Good that you called. I had another dream, at the limits of prescience."

"You have always been close to the High Path," Nirrti whispered. "Tell me."

"As the cycles of the calendar of the heirs of the Asvins turn, so will it be that in the highest fire in the sky shall I one day live, if the wheel is to be spun once more, dwelling not on a planet but in the void as a fish within the sea."

"Is it conditional?" Nirrti neigh upon trembled herself, a terrible loss of control even here with the one she loved, and the Mariliths around who loved her like a mother.

"It is conditional, of course," that lilting voice answered with a soft laugh. "None can know the outcome of a battle where the Devaastra clash. Prescience cancels prescience. But know it, and remember it nonetheless. If the worst happens, there will be another chance. The wheel turns, my love! The wheel turns!"

"Regardless," Nirrti answered with a grim and rising confidence, "I will see you on the other side of this battle when it has run its deadly course. We will speak again while you are Lassha. I will joust with the Fates if needs be, to make this so, I swear to you on the blood of the many I have killed."

"Then... Then I will see you on the other side, my love," Lassha answered finally, and silently, and spoke the old name that Nirrti had only shared with her, and then, too, Nirrti replied with the old name that Lassha had once borne, and the image vanished.

"Activate the nullification field!"

The voice was all thunder and snapped crisply through the air of the bridge, and with the rest of the defending fleet, the Lord Krishna winked out into a bubble-realm beyond the knowledge of energy.

"Bring me my scrying-board," Nirrti glanced to one of those who served her. "I shall work through it until nothing remains in me but the Will to Fight."

That's...Good, but confusing. What universe is it in, and how does it tie in with the rest of TGG?

Master_Baerne wrote:That's...Good, but confusing. What universe is it in, and how does it tie in with the rest of TGG?

It is in all universes, and none; it is the TGG, at its most fundamental level.

Master_Baerne wrote:That's...Good, but confusing. What universe is it in, and how does it tie in with the rest of TGG?

Now now now, it wouldn't be fun if we just came out and told you everything, would it?

Think back to the handful of stories so far that have been heavily tied into the metaplot. Think of various things from them, whole scenes or small tidbits of dialogue.

This short story already has quite a few connectable dots in it.

A few things from this and The Last Woman Standing had me wondering, "no-fields" (at least that's what I thought I heard) were something I remember from later novels in the Dune series. Also "Traveling without moving" was mentioned. Is there a tie-in to that universe? Or is this just an homage?

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:

Master_Baerne wrote:That's...Good, but confusing. What universe is it in, and how does it tie in with the rest of TGG?

It is in all universes, and none; it is the TGG, at its most fundamental level.

Oh...I didn't connect Maedhv. Everything makes sense now.

Gerald Tarrant wrote:A few things from this and The Last Woman Standing had me wondering, "no-fields" (at least that's what I thought I heard) were something I remember from later novels in the Dune series. Also "Traveling without moving" was mentioned. Is there a tie-in to that universe? Or is this just an homage?

It's using a term Herbert invented to describe a similar thing. Just as there are multiple forms of hyperdrive in multiple unrelated universes. No other significance.

I was half expecting Iblis to show up in some way, but eh the night is young. Awesome work as usual marina, you know i'm not even going to post my fanfic on this site, i will test it on fanfiction.net

Ping.

Ping.

Ping!

Ping!!

"Nula-field on standby and fire the main gun," Nirrti spoke calmly without an unsurprised move, save to cast away the long pole to her scrying board. "Establish squadron links the same moment..."

And already they had appeared, and the huge holographic projector filled up before them with the scene of the battle. Thousands of Asvin and Sarasavsati ships of their enemies high in their towers on the endless night of the sky. A thousand orbital habitats, each a hundred kilometers long, reduced to plasma already with their opening salvoes, shields torn through with the concentrated energies of many ships.

A Lord Vishnu-class Rakshastra was a 28.7-kilometre long artifice of two paired cigar-hulls for Vimanas linked together by two huge crossbars aft--the first of which held the assembly of six utterly massive gravitic fins for power, all finely armoured--whereas the leading edges melded into a double-mirrored Pyramid, which was arranged edge-on rather than face-on forward, with the forewardmost point having an obelisk projecting out from it for several kilometres. At the joining of the outer hulls and the pyramid to each beam, and the top and bottom of each pyramid, immense green beams with cracks of yellow lightning through them formed and lanced down to a single point right forward at the tip of the obelisk within a fraction of a second, where another beam projecting through the obelisk met the four. The five beams merged into one tremendous lance of energy that tore through the fabric of space, slammed into the shields of an enemy counterpart of the exact same class, and tearing through them in a heartbeat ripped deeper into its hull until its reactors were pierced and the ship vapourized into an incendiary inferno.

At the exact same moment, Nirrti reached out in all her horribly potent power, and crushed the life from the High Order of existence of the Devaastra who had commanded the ship, a comrade, once, now a victim of her supreme skill in battle. Her attention turned for a moment--only a moment--to insure that Lord Ram had accomplished the same before she swung her senses in the Highest Realm to the targets of Maedhv and Danuya and lent her power to their's in exterminating their targets as well with ripples of energy that tore through and shattered the fundamental lays of them in the Highest Order. After all, they had only perhaps a femtosecond in which to act from the moment of vapourization, and even for Lady Death, that was not much time.

"A fire on the night," Nirrti breathed in aesthetic, virtually orgasmic release at the scene below her, at the victories already scored, of two Lord Vishnu's knocked out in the first salvo and the No-Ship squadron of Maedhv having shattered dozens of lighter ships with their own signature main weapons, which reduced the targeted region of space to absolute zero and caused the dissolution of all matter therein. and turned her head fractionally to Saburisha, the Fore of the Hoard. "Launch the Vimanas!"

They swung out from behind the protective cover of Fair Luna, pinning the fleet of Lord Ravana between their own and the planetary shields of Earth, and her enormous defence batteries which were now vapourizing 4 - 6km long cruisers with every shot through femtosecond gaps in the planetary shield automatically created, the exact size of the passing beams, while columns of shield-energy projected up around the sides of the beams to prevent them from superheating the entire atmosphere of the planet to a thousand degrees or more from each single shot. One of those shots struck the most prominent of the remaining enemy Lord Vishnu class ships.... And the shields, of course, held perfectly. But the flare of energy caught Nirrti's eye, and with it her mind swept through the many of the powerful still arrayed, and fell on one.

"Ravana! Let us see what you shall do when I take your hideous advisors from you!" She concentrated all of her energy in the Hidden World, forms upon forms as all of space nearby was drained, drained of power, fed into her and she projected it outward, and tore through the shields of the Lord Varuna in a way that they could not cope with, though neither did they fail. Instead, she found the alien presences there and, at the same time that she was forced to divert more and more of her strength to resisting the immediate and vigorous attacks of Ravana in the hidden world, she ripped his advisors from him and brought them straight to the bridge of the Lord Krishna.

The three, in their encounter suits, stood on the bridge of the great ship of the Sarasavsati, and their shock could be sensed by all around even as they did, indeed, feel some fear. And now, for the first time, Nirrti used brute force to reach into them and know their names.

"Vorlons," she pronounced delicately. "You have started this war of incomprehendable bloodshed, and now you seek to bring it to a close in genocide."

"Alien, not-human," they answered, "For you--take your ship. Leave. We will account you one of us. We are of justice--and we will work justice for you. The humans have grown too powerful for us all, too threatening, and far to evil. You, though, you are redeemable."

"There is no redemption in parties to genocide," Nirrti answered. "No redemption in the culmination of this slaughter. Redemption will only come when the screams of the dying have quieted. Now, now, now I may quiet them," she continued in a dropping voice and laughing release. "And so for sake of the blood of the many I have killed--know their fear!" And without another word she turned all her energy outward, heaving off the efforts of Ravana and a dozen of his lesser Devaastras to assault her, and seized the Vorlons in the Realm Beyond, and heaved at them every feeling of fear and terror she had received from the planets she had, many times, over many years, killed, and as she did, she tore their energy forms to their smallest components and then flung those to a distance of many light seconds such that every tendril of their bodies was wracked with a pain they had thought they could no longer feel.

Nirrti at once leapt to her feet. "Command override to the Lord Varuna!" She had not been completely honest to Maedhv; if she could halt the battle now without further effusion of blood, she would.

"Ahh, Lady Death," the darker skin of Ravana was revealed, high and proud with his affectation of red eyes and a flaring mustachio in cape-bedecked form with the six arms that were a common modification of convenience in the Sarasavsati elite. "Do you really think they were directing me?"

At once, her heart fell, and head sunk, and he laughed.

"I had prayed," she answered. "That we could finally bring this war to an end."

"They showed me the path, but I follow it," Ravana replied. "I will have her--I will have our Earth, one way or the other!"

"Only upon the corpse of my soul. In my agony and shame, I know no other course. And so now shall I reap your young." She cut the channel and reached out and mustered a terrible storm in the fabric of reality which tore apart at once a heavily shielded cruiser bearing one of the rebel Golden Condors, and annihilated her in the Hidden World at the same time without a second thought. And then she did it again, and again. They were powerful enough to be Gods, but for seven hundred years, Lady Death had made a sport of the killing of Gods, and now as the Lord Krishna dove forward into the fray, exchanging fire at a mere two light seconds' range, shields flared solid blue with the massed fire against her, she brushed off Ravana's attempts to lock her into a duel, and with half her strength stunted, still found the werewithal to kill six of the fifty-five they had still then faced, before his mate, Mandodari, linked her powers with that of Kumbakarna and, indeed as Ram had feared, Sita herself, and with their combined strength forced such a terrible attack upon Nirrti that her physical form began to waver on the bridge and she wailed out in her fury and her pain and broke from her attacks to concentrate on her own defence while the Mariliths edged away in abject fear.

Below them, a salvo of missiles from the combined rebel fleet erupted with their teratonne range firepower along the planetary shields, flaring them blue, but they held perfect and steady, and the fire from the surface below was nearly unabated, while Vimanas and Astras fought by the million 'round the great ships, the gunboats that they were of some hundreds of tonnes carrying the ship-killing missiles which steadily overwhelmed more and more of their enemies, and each other. But steadily, surely, Nirrti could feel the currents of the battle: They were beginning to win, the victory was erring in their direction, the tides had turned against the gamble of the terrible and mad Ravana. Her surprise attack had pinned his fleet between her guns and those of the planet, and planetary defences were no small matter on Sacred Terra.

Starships tore through the dark under their gravity drives, purple and green beams being exchanged, overwhelming shields and cutting up hulls, as the outnumbered fleet of Nirrti and her Asvin allies tore through the great number of the rebels, aided by their tremendous advantage in Vimanas and Astras and the constant fire of the surface batteries. Most of the civilian infrastructure in orbit had already ceased to exist, and even in the midst of her battle Nirrti still had time to shudder as a wave of knowledge had come through that, while the Golden Condor Gorkha had passed by the planetward Luna colony and demolished its shields with the fire of his squadron, he had also reached out and absorbed the life force of the entire population, killing ten billion purebloods and geneforms alike of his own former Asvin Empire in the merest femtosecond, with a single collective wail of terrible agony at a psychic, rather than physical level.

But Ravana's treachery was as intelligent as Nirrti's honour. Even as the Lord Krishna skewed to avoid a shot by the main gun of one of the enemy Vishnu's, Ravana seized upon a way to weaken his enemy, to smash them and regain the initiative. He abruptly released himself from the combined bonds that, with Mandodari and Kumbakarna and Sita, had let him check Nirrti in the High Combat for perhaps an hour, perhaps more. For the past fifteen minutes Nirrti's physical form had been wavering as the bleedoff destroyed, melted the chair in which she had settled herself, and she now staggered to her knees on the raw armoured grille of the ship's command deck, made out of the same substances as the hull just for this reason.

And then, all at once, it let up. She shot to her feet, her body became whole and solid again, instead of flickering in and out of reality, and with a tremendous and furious scream that terrified even her own Mariliths, she reached out in counterattack, and seized upon Kumbakarna. Nirrti, hide in her pride and in her rage, tore the remaining power out of the universe in the area until the bleed-through lowered the temperature around her own ship dangerously toward absolute zero. Then, with her savagery controlled, and focused, she flicked out her power, tendrils of energy in the Hidden World, seized upon Kumbakarna, and erased his body from existence as she had been resisting the attempts of the four to do to her for the past hour; now it was accomplished in a femtosecond, as she followed, high in the hidden world, and wiped clear the traces of his essence there which would have otherwise, mere moments later, again given him life.

She staggered back, exhausted, and realized, too, that something had happened. There were more dead. Mandodari and Ravana remained, but... Sita! But none attacked... In fear, she flushed her senses out through the fleet, and realized exactly what had happened. Lord Ram was dead, too: Ravana had turned on and betrayed his own ally in the turned and mad Sita, killing her in surprise. And then when Ram felt the shock of the death of his lover he was so weakened by it that he was vulnerable to Ravana's attack, too, and in a single strike, one-fourth of her numbers in Devaastra was lost.

Her mind reached out to the controls of the ship, for a moment not attacked due to the tremendous exhaustion, she fancied, of Ravana and Mandodari. The central hologram changed to an image of the reserve bridge of the Lady Saranga, and there stood reliable old Hanuman, the captain, his eyes filled with tears. "My Lady, Lord Ram has fallen to the enemy..."

"I know, I know, dearest Hanuman," Nirrti replied softly, quietly. "Now I am the last. But can you fight the ship? I must have the Saranga's strength in my line."

"I can, My Lady. To your honour and the salvation of all." He composed himself with heavy sighs. "But what of the future, what of honour now, when Ram was brought down by such a foul deed?"

"They will be immortal by my hand," Nirrti quietly repeated her promise to Ram, and then sighed. "The battle goes on. And now we are losing it. Fight hard, Hanuman!"

"For the sacred Savaswat, for Golden Lanka and for the high Pamirs, we will fight to the death, My Lady, stranger who has done us finer service than all others. My the fates judge you worthy, and Dharma look kind."

"Thank you, Hanuman. And to you, also, the immortality of the pen." She killed the connection and immediately mustered her recovered powers to repeat the process, ripping another of the weaker and turned Golden Condors or Devaastra--she was so furious, so bitter in her desperate effort that she didn't even take the time to note who she had killed as she usually would--apart in the real world and tearing their existence to shreds in the hidden world, simultaneously, destroying all hope of survival and rendering the godlike into the nonexistent.

And then power flared on the bridge, and a figure, with fine alabaster skin and dark hair and eyes, a proud and thin but somewhat hooked nose, high cheek-bones and the black of her locks tightly pinned back, flushed full through a shifting effect, materializing before her, looking furious, her mind full of betrayal.

Nirrti very nearly spat her name.

"Mandodari."

She raised her hand and concentrated her powers to wipe the mate of Ravana from the cosmos.

But Mandodari instead dropped to her knees before Nirrti on the enormously heated deck, her body well capable of dealing with it, such as it was. "Nirrti, forgive what I have done and give me a chance to redeem myself," she choked. "I could not imagine that Ravana would grow so evil, so mad, as to strike down Sita like that merely to gain the slightest advantage in the battle."

Nirrti rocked back on her heels, and then smiled, a gesture which even in Mandodari's wildest hopes surprised her.

"People fall in love with me, and abandon evil. I could find that ability thoroughly charming.. No, I do find it thoroughly charming. Stand, Mandodari, and let me look into your mind. You know you must to gain back my respect and my trust, for your evil is far greater than her's has ever been, in this life or the past."

"..or the past." Mandodari stood, slowly, and trembled. "Is that why you chose her over my own advances? You saw her past? You knew her..."

"As one of my own race," Nirrti answered agreeably. "And then, too, she chose good over evil in defecting to me--as you now have done. I admit I have never expected this out of you, Mandodari, though I always respected you. And perhaps, perhaps in another universe, another time and place where she was not to again be, the loneliness in my heart would have brought me to you. But that is why I chose her, when you so furiously claimed I was leaving the embrace of your affection for the sake of a barely cognizant mortal, scarcely worthy of the High Caste and in the most pathetic of police inspector positions in the midst of a horrible war.

"But I love her, and she shall be grand again in time as she was before, and we will be happy forever, and ever. Now let me look, for we don't have much time." Outside, indeed, the planetary shields of Luna, already flickering and mostly failing, had now collapsed entirely, and the scouring power of the beams of Ravana's fleet ripped through all of the dayside defensive emplacements, destroying them in great numbers, the huge missile fields along the terminator line in the south detonating with such force that they turned an area of hundreds of kilometers in diameter into molten lava. Most of the still surviving population of the moon was exterminated in the next few minutes, either intentionally by Ravana's fleet, or else in the crossfire, and yet the battle continued completely unabated, the planetary shields of Earth radiating a brilliant blue like a tiny star of immense heat from the directed fire upon them, which was indeed worthy of the energy output of a blue-white supergiant.

"I'll do as you say... My love." Mandodari's voice broke. "I took him out of spite, and only out of spite, to at least have second best. I was so prideful, and knew how desired I was by all others..."

"But for all your wanton sensuality and even compassion, you were still led astray to pure evil. Perhaps because you exercised no restraint. I am sorry, Mandodari." She concentrated, and found the barriers to the woman's mind down. So, too, did Ravana, who tried to snuff her out through the Hidden World at once, but of course Nirrti had enough strength to match him even as she sifted through all of her knowledge and the intents of her soul, as she viewed every breathtaking moment of her love for Nirrti and her rejection which had led Mandodari, ultimately, to evil.

"It is so cruel," Nirrti finally finished, softly, "that we can see the future of all others, but not of other Devaastra, not of the Condors, not of those touched by them. If I had known how much of this I might have halted, how much better of a position this fleet would be in now--then for the sake of the babes in their cradles if nothing else I would have loved you, even if it was at the cost of Lassha's disrespect. To put her above the good of the innocent, after all, would be to never deserve her at all. Come here, Mandodari."

The woman rose, glassy eyes close to tears, and stepped closer. Nirrti embraced her, and kissed her in a moment of tender passion, in a way that Nirrti had before reserved, long ago, for a husband fifteen hundred years dead, and then for a lover.. For Lassha, once dead, now reincarnated, on the planet below.

And she wept inside her own heart at how cynical she had become. For she was filled with fury at the weakness of Mandodari in truth, at her visceral sensuality that had led her astray into this, shown her desperately unworthy. Yet, the tenderness, at least, was sincere, for so was Mandodari's repentance, and so were the considerations of the past also a truth.

But she could be more cynical, too, and as their tongues lingered upon each other and arms held each other close, she activated the hologram to the Lady Saranga, to let Hanuman see her in her embrace with Mandodari. Then, ever so gently, she guided them out of the kiss, and smiled gently. "I will give you the Lady Saranga to command, and quickly. We have already wasted five minutes and cannot afford to waste more. Ravana is now fully recovered and he is pressing on me again. You must distract him--only you are left who can hold your own against him, alone, defensively. And while you do this, I will annihilate the enemy fleet. Ram and Sita shall be your's to avenge as your penance, Mandodari, and I welcome back to the service of the land of your birth and your home."

She turned to Hanuman, and smiled. "I kiss her to forgive her. Let her avenge Ram and Sita, for it was in rage at how treacherously Ravana slew them that she has come back to us, and trust that I have looked inside of her and know all, and that she will fight to the death for us again. She now commands Ram's old Horde."

"I understand, Lady Nirrti," Hanuman replied, the gesture of the kiss having sufficiently extreme significance as a sign of tenderness among former enemies, to a Sarasavsati, that they could only accept the statement, and Mandodari's change of heart, as being perfectly sincere.

"Go, Mandodari. I will see you on the other side, should be both survive."

"Tell me your name, first? Your true one?"

Nirrti smiled, leaned close, and whispered. It brought a dreadfully resigned but happy smile to Mandodari's face as well, and their lips brushed one last time before she disappeared, and reappeared with Hanuman on the bridge of the Lady Saranga. "Fight well, dear," Nirrti offered, and then cut the connection, leaning hard against the railing of the Lord Krishna as she began to issue orders.

"Order the Golden Horde to follow us into the main body of Lord Ravana's fleet. He has silenced and murdered Sacred Luna, but we will have the last joust in this battle. I want Danuya's squadron of Nula-ships to follow me, and Maedhv's to stand with the Lady Saranga against the Lord Varuna, Ravana's other flagships, and their escorts. We will reap of the enemy light and then they will be truly trapped, by our accelerating 'round the planet where the energy release is so great that even their sensors will be limited."

"Understood, Your Ladyship!"

Nirrti's force and Danuya's with her accelerated clear as the Devaastra and Golden Condor alike reached out together and again, and again, snuffed the life out of countless of their fellows in the enemy fleet, slashing with their combined strength through half of the survivors, and the guns of the fleet tearing them to pieces en passant. And then they ripped around Earth in a powered orbit to the far side where the shields were not completely obscured with blue, and Nirrti saw a last glimpse of the brilliant Golden Cities of the Asvin homelands, high in the southern mountains of Nukahoatl, rising so sharply along the whole western coast of the southern half of the continental accretion. Once the mortal enemy of her adopted Sarasavsati, now, they, too, were the innocents under her care.

And then they arrived at the enemy fleet again, bursting around the planet through the haze of radiated energy like they were skipping along the surface of a blue-white star, main guns fully charged. The first shot finished off the last remaining Vishnu in Ravana's fleet except for his own flagship, and killed another of his most powerful lieutenants with the aide of Nirrti scouring him out of existence in the High Realms. But the planetary shields were very close to collapsing, and Ravana, out of some malicious intent, instead of trying for the Lady Saranga and Mandodari with whom he was now locked in furious battle, directed the main weapon of his flagship, of the Lord Varuna, toward the planetary shields of Earth.

At full charge, which Ravana's flagship had now achieved, the main gun of a Lord Vishnu was quite powerful enough to rip through substantial shielding and turn the planet below into a molten cinder. The outer planetary shield had already been effectively battered down, Earth uniquely having two, one Asvin, one Sarasavsati, which were double-layed for incredible resistance, but still couldn't quite stand up to guns which had been purpose-designed to overwhelm planetary shielding, like those on the flagships. The beam, crackling yellow around green, forward at the tip of Ravana's flagship and was released with incredible power and rapidity, vapourizing a few luckless ships in its path before impacting with the planetary shields, causing the total failure of the outer shield before driving into the second and only expending itself when the shields, overtaxed, several generators blown, were within a heart's beat from collapse, and then a few salvoes of missiles and sweeps of cutting beams--not even intended for that purpose--finished the job. The shields collapsed, and now only the low-lying theatre shields interlocked into a latticework honeycomb over the planet provided any protection, and that was quickly brought under grave threat.

Nirrti and Danuya reaped of Ravana's main fleet while Mandodari and Maedhv checked him and his closest remaining servants in battle. And it was then, in the midst of the hottest and most desperate portion of the battle yet, with the great Nula-ships and Sarasavsati cruisers racing about and exchanging their teratonne-level blows, that Nirrti remained the nervous warning of Maedhv before the start of the battle, as she felt, nibbling on her consciousness, the sweep of a horde of Astras toward a section of the interlocking theatre shields which had already been battered onto the point of collapse. She teleported herself directly into the cockpit of her Vimana.

It was one of the highest, finest, 'golden Vimanas', that were custom made for the Devaastra in a way that the Asvin could not replicate on behalf of their Golden Condors. They were latticework cages which enhanced and increased the power of the Devaastras and made them a terror even for their Golden Condor counterparts. Nirrti had the last one of them left, and she had carefully hidden it under a null-field until the last moment; a signal to the computers had mechanically given the order to drop it, she had teleported instantly, and now she was accelerating clear of the Lord Krishna at some tens of thousands of g's to quickly bring up to the same speed as the Asvin formation as it dived toward the planet below, leaving her Mariliths and Davuya to carry on the fight against Ravana's fleet.

Lord Gorkha and his closest apprentice, Lord Kshatriya, plunged with a hundred Astras toward the planet. Nirrti closed rapidly, and concentrated through the Vimana such power as she had never imagined that even she could focus, fury and rage and desperate working through her, such energy that the lives of those in some ships nearby were extinguished without her even realizing it as she reached out for more and more powerful. And then she struck at the same time as the weapons on the Vimana fired. Storms of energy erupted and tore through the charging horde of Astras and the weapons flared and fired again and again whilst she loosed her Koman Shipkillers to explode in their midst and kill more.

In the merest of heartbeats, one hundred became thirteen, eighty-seven destroyed by her outright, as the terrible words of Maedhv swept through her in ironclad prophecy and she prayed it could not be so. She opened fire, again and again, and another eight of the Astras vanished while she prepared herself for another strike. The remaining five fired off their missiles, eight smaller missiles each from three, two firing Koman-equivalents directly into the remaining theatre shields in the area, which were overwhelmed by their teratonne range detonations as they impacted.

Then the smaller missiles detonated, and the sensors told Nirrti the horror of it, a perfect culmination that ripped through her with the surety of prophecy, with the promise that Lassha was doomed, such that her wail stood out, chilled the universe, in pain and anguish. They had been neutron flux warheads, bombardment the planet which neutrinos in such intensity, with other small-level subparticles that massive radioactive damage to virtually everyone on the planet was guaranteed, and right over the Pamirs where Lassha had been sheltering, too! Life in the furthest south and furthest north would survive the best; those in the direct path it seemed surely must be doomed.

And Nirrti screamed again, and turned her power directly against Gorkha. He fought back furiously, but now, now, he was no match for the overwhelming energies her despair gave her, her mad vengeance. She ripped him out of the universe in an insatiable fury, in the beat of her heart, his Astra vapourizing with him. The other three High Caste pilots and their Astras were destroyed in the same sweep of her powers, and only Kshatriya survived to activate his fold drive at the very last moment before Nirrti in her ceaseless fury tore him from the universe as well.

Her rage flung her to the state of drawing on such power that the sun flared and dimmed and ships near her lost their generators, all the power sucked from them to feed her fury. Her Vimana rose out of the atmosphere, so hot from the energy of its acceleration that it glowed like a tiny star itself, and she roared out to find the Lord Krishna oppressed on every side, Danuya overwhelmed by many enemies and erased from existence herself, tears staining her face even as she screamed again and again, and with each scream seemed to shatter the very fabric of reality around here, twisting and distorting space.

She used her powers without regard to the ethics of it now, her terrible fury driving her to bring the universe itself to scream with resonance in the heights of her rage. The crews of the fleet of Ravana fell dead and the Devaastras and Golden Condors were taken, twisted, ripped from the fabric of reality while the surging of her surviving ships immediately made to capture or destroy the lifeless hulks she left in her wake, the remaining ships she had not noticed to kill being quickly claimed by the defensive batteries of Earth, which grimly continued to fire for as long as the personnel manning them could function with the lethal doses of radiation they had received.

Nirrti blew past them all and aimed right for Ravana's flagship. Ravana was perhaps the only one not stricken with fear, as he himself took all the concentrated power he could, and turned it upon brave Mandodari. He finally, finally overwhelmed her as she fought back, as long, and desperately as she could, and then she succumbed to his strength and was herself extinguished, her last desperate cry echoing through the now-pitiless mind of Nirrti, who showed little sympathy to it in what conscious thought remained among the inconsolable, concentrated rage that she had become.

Nirrti--forgive us for what we have done!

And then, too, Mandodari was gone, and with her Hanuman as Ravana's flagship directed its full power onto the savaged Lady Saranga and blew her out of existence. But he had pushed to the very limits of his own power, and Nirrti seemed to have tapped into limitless powers that none had before seen from one of the number of the Devaastras, even as shocked as he himself was at the utter madness of Gorkha and Kshatriya which had utterly destroyed the population of the Earth.

Nirrti grew terribly calm, whispering at first until the words rose to a scream: "To you, Lassha, I am the wings of vengeance!" No more high ideals. No more hope. All was gone but the will to fight, the will to avenge one's self upon one's enemies. Nirrti fell down into a hell of her own making as she gave herself entirely over to revenging Lassha upon her killers. She amassed of herself all the power she could through the unique latticework, and then teleported from the Vimana directly onto the bridge of the Lord Varuna.

"Lord Ravana, I have come, claiming my victory, to this end where I now shall see you die with my own eyes!" Artistic in her lavish expenditure of power, she formed a sword, an old sword, out of the flesh of her right arm until she held it in her reformed hand, and did it in a microsecond of agony across her face, ramming it right into the chest of the exhausted and startled Ravana, who now, abruptly, realized his own doom.

"You can't, you can't do anything to me with that.." he cried in gnawing doubt as he threw all of his powers at her and they seemed to fall off the shaded wings of her rage into nothingness, the wavering of Nirrti's form under the attack making her more furious.

"Watch me, Ravana, and die!" She concentrated all her power and used the sword, symbolically, to channel it directly into him. His body ripped apart, vanishing in a puff of neutrinos, even as he resisted her in the higher world, for a femtosecond, but just a femtosecond, not long enough to stop her from shattering his form in the higher world, from accomplishing the complete erasure of his existence from all the cosmos.

As he vanished, the bridge fell into a strangled shock, and Nirrti viewed his hirelings and loyalists, and without another thought, brought her power against them. The whole crew of the Lord Varuna dropped dead in an instant at the terrible thought of Nirrti, with nary a sound nor strangled cry to mark their horrible passing. Nirrti collapsed to her knees, panting and trembling horribly, and reached out. Only Kshatriya remained, it seemed, and he was beyond her power--for now. On her own side, there were but seventy-three Sarasavsati ships and sixty-eight Asvin, not counting the derelict hulks of the enemy which could be restored, whose crews she had strangled the life out of with mere thought. Among the Golden Condors, only Maedhv remained.

"Later, later," Nirrti whispered. "I swear again upon the blood of the many I have killed, that you, too, Kshatriya, shall fall." And then she forced herself to her feet, shaking and still wavering--the amount of energy she had forced through her essence, shaking her very attachment to the cosmos itself!--and teleported herself back to her politely waiting Vimana, that had abruptly deaccelerated to a relative stop the moment she had left under its semisapient controlling intelligence. Without another word, save a flashed order to Maedhv, more a burst of images than actual words, to take command of the fleet and secure the hulks, she dove her Vimana straight down into the Pamirs, the dying Earth, the radiation-poisoned falling to their horrible deaths throughout the planet before, filling up the view-screen below her eyes as she raced down until within a kilometer of the ground right over the shelter, and brought the Vimana to a stop in a rush of air so great it produced a fireball which slapped at the mountains and burned clear of the life upon them.

And then she teleported straight down, into the shelter, into the halls of the groaning and dying, and stalked along, past their accusing glares, the shouts of rage that they had been let down. Nirrti quietly ignored them--none, of course, were stupid enough even now to attack her--and then arrived at Lassha's office as the local security commissioner.

She was settled back in her chair, a pool of blackened vomit to her side, shock white and with flesh starting to ooze and skin turning bileous beneath. But she still looked beautiful to Nirrti's eyes. "I fear we cannot escape the Fates," Lassha whispered miserably, but then smiled through her pain.

"Still. You have jousted with them. You kept your promise, my love. You came back to see me again when the battle was over, victory in your arms. I know it is poor consolation, but to me, at least, dying is made a little easier by that."

"My love," Nirrti whispered, and stepped across the floor, sullying her boots without a care with the vomitus of her lover, to grab her up into her own arms and hold her close. "You know there's nothing I can do because of the radiation and, oh God! But that I am forced to see this again in the moment of victory! TWICE DAMNED!!" She sobbed openly and freely.

And Lassha embraced her. "But fear not. We will be together again, when the wheel turns on the dark cycle that has begun. And third times are always sacred, my love."

Nirrti's rage fell from her, and together they collapsed against the wall, sobbing in each other's arms. Nirrti did all she could, then, with her powers, to ease Lassha's pain, even as life fell so quickly from her.

Lassha smiled as the pain vanished, and kissed Nirrti very passionately. "This time will be slower, I think, and you can provide all the palliative care that I need. But what of all those on the planet who have received fatal doses? My love, put them out of their misery. Please."

"So like you, to think of the suffering of others first," Nirrti whispered, and concentrated, and hundreds of billions of the dead, she hastened to a painless death with the aide of her powers in a last, exhausting effort which made her drop down against Lassha, unconscious, her body wavering in and out of reality for a moment before she stabilized, a last act for the behest of those who could have nothing left but pain.

Lassha lowered her to the floor, and held her close, smiling wryly as the pain slowly returned, until she awoke perhaps an hour later, and nestled herself in the arms of her dying lover. "We'll stay close until the end, love," Lassha offered. "And when it comes, take solace that in the end, we will be together again. As that was foreseen, so was this, and both will come to pass, when the wheel turns."

"But I wanted you so badly be happy now," Nirrti very nearly wailed. The double-fate of their love crushed her down to the very bone, down to the essence of her soul. All of the world was mere blackness, and the light faded with Lassha's life.

"And I am happy. I am in your arms, and there is no finer way for me to die. I will see you again, my love. Soon enough. And then, I pray, dharma will give us eternity, after all." She could not help but smile, wryly, at the irony of comforting her lover even as she was the one who died, yet she did it without a trace of regret, and indeed, all the happiness she claimed.

But Nirrti could only cry, for that while, and hold Lassha closer. Then the tears dried, and the last act of their life together in the miserable falsehood of the Golden Age drew to an end. Nirrti never let her lover out of her arms, until the very last moment when her radiation-battered body breathed her last.

It took Lassha nine days to die.

Excellent story, Mari, and most interesting, too.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin